This Week in the News…

Posted: June 21, 2002 at 1:00 am, Last Updated: November 30, -0001 at 12:00 am

Following are highlights of national news coverage George Mason received during the past week:

Friday, June 14, Santa Fe New Mexican

Memento Mori

“[Chawky] Frenn not only questions himself. He asks questions of his students at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va., where he is a visiting assistant professor. ‘I strongly emphasize, in my beginning classes, to learn the alphabet of visual communication–how to make form and light and space the traditional way,’ he said. ‘I don’t want them to paint abstractly because they don’t know how to paint realistically. For the more advanced students, the process of painting will become a process of analyzing things to find their own obsessions. I say to them, ‘What do you dream of? What nags you in the night?'”

Saturday, June 15, Boston Globe

Study Finds Web of Deceit on Mental Tests

“It’s too early to characterize the damage that has already been done by Internet sites, and unclear what can be done about it, said Jack Naglieri, a professor at George Mason University and the cochairman of the American Psychological Association’s new task force on the Internet and psychological testing. The task force, created last year, will report to the APA on the growing problem during the annual meeting in 2003, Naglieri said.”

Tuesday, June 18, Wall Street Journal

Make Them Talk

By E.V. Kontorovich, who will be an assistant professor of law at George Mason University Law School in Virginia in January 2003.

“As Washington warns of impending terrorist attack, potentially with weapons of mass destruction, hundreds of Taliban and al Qaeda detainees and suspects are sitting mum in their cells. According to news reports, they just won’t talk. With so much at stake, the U.S. should use all reasonable means available to get pearls of intelligence out of the clammed-up captives. But the interrogators have been barred from using one of most obvious tools–truth serum…”

Tuesday, June 18, Gannett News Service

Death Row DNA Proposal Gaining Momentum

“Critics say the legislation could allow guilty Death Row inmates to stall for time. One law professor who testified before the Senate panel charged that the bill was a ‘stealth’ attempt by death penalty opponents to undermine capital punishment. The legislation would create ‘unnecessary costs to carrying out the punishment our most brutal killers have earned,’ said William Otis, adjunct professor of law at George Mason University in Virginia.”

Allison Aubrey: “William Otis of the George Mason University Law School testified there’s no evidence that any innocent person has ever been executed for a crime, but said there is evidence to suggest that the death penalty is underutilized. He called those pushing for reform ‘stealth abolitionists,’ whose real agenda is to abolish the death penalty.”

Otis: “If they want outright abolition, let them say so directly and win their case with the public.”

Wednesday, June 19, Fox News The Big Story With John Gibson

Eugene Kontorovich, George Mason University: “Here we know that there are impending terrorist attacks–the government is releasing new warnings every day. And with the stakes being that high, giving people truth serum really is not a very severe measure. As a matter of fact, it doesn’t even hurt. It’s funny to think of this as cruel or unusual punishment or any kind of torture, because what these drugs essentially are is painkillers…. And the constitutional protections for that are already in place, so we have no reason to worry about these statements being forced out of a suspect and then used to prosecute him. This would only be done to find out who their accomplices are.”

“Alan Webb is leaving the University of Michigan. The most highly touted American distance running prospect in more than 30 years confirmed that he’ll continue his education at George Mason University, although Webb won’t run for the Fairfax, Va., school and appears poised to turn professional.”